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Goodbye, Norma Jean
Last week, on the way to Church, we heard Elton John’s “Candle in the Wind” on the radio. My oldest daughter broke the silence: “Who’s Norma Jean?” I explained that Norma Jean Baker was Marilyn Monroe’s real name, a woman who became so famous that her true identity was lost behind a stage name and an image the world expected.
My daughter was horrified that Monroe felt she had to become someone else to be accepted, to be noticed, to be loved. I remember asking my mother the same question in the '80s: “Who’s Norma Jean?”
Most of us, I guess, in some way, have a version of ourselves we present to the world. We edit. We perform. We hide the parts that feel too plain, too messy or too complicated. Sometimes, under all that effort, we forget who we really are.
To follow Christ, none of that is necessary. God doesn’t require a stage name or a public persona. In John 10:14, Jesus says, “I am the good shepherd; I know my own, and my own know me.”
Jesus wants the one beneath the makeup and behind the smile. Psalm 139:1 says, “Lord, You have searched me and known me.” He knows our true name, our real story, the hurt we hide. Still, he says: “Come.”
When she became Marilyn, Norma Jean faded away. But when we come to Christ, we don’t lose ourselves; we find ourselves. Transformed by the Spirit, in Him, we are not defined by what the world expects but by who He created us to be. We don’t need to edit our testimony or rehearse our lines.
Jesus welcomes our flaws, our failures, our true selves. In my life, it is through those flaws and failures that He has made me new.
We don’t need a spotlight. We don’t need a new name. Come as you are. No stage name necessary.
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